About 50 people attended the July 11 Kalamazoo Planning Commission meeting where commissioners decided whether to recommend to city commissioners changes to the city's sign ordinance that address digital billboards.Emily Monacelli | MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette

Planning commissioners heard from 17 community members -- most of them opposed to allowing digital billboards in Kalamazoo -- and debated for more than an hour during the three-hour meeting.

The 10 people who spoke out against digital billboards cited their potential to distract drivers and cause a safety hazard and also the potential of a decline in property values near digital billboards.

"We understand what these billboards, in the long run, will do," said Kalamazoo resident Greg Veeck. "Billboards we can't afford to ever buy out again. Once they're up ... we can never afford to get rid of them because they're going to be too expensive to buy back down."

Meanwhile, Jeannine Dodson, general manager of Adams Outdoor Advertising, said the draft ordinance would "negatively impact" Adams' business but that her company would not oppose the ordinance. Adams' request in December 2012 to convert four static billboards to digital billboards around the city prompted city staff to request a digital billboard moratorium so a stakeholder committee could explore how the sign ordinance should be altered.

Commissioners ultimately decided to recommend the changes, including allowing up to eight digital billboards in the city where existing billboards are located, as long as those billboards are not within 300 feet of a parcel zoned residential and are within light or general manufacturing, commercial or downtown's central business district. Two exceptions would be West Main Street between Northampton and the city limits and East Michigan Avenue downtown.

Under the proposed changes, billboards eligible to be upgraded to digital billboards would have to be located along state trunk lines. They would not be able to change faces quicker than eight seconds. Also, the maximum luminescence of digital billboards would not be able to exceed 0.3 foot-candles over ambient light conditions measured at a height of five feet and a distance of 200 feet.

Commissioners also recommended, by the suggestion of Commissioner Geoffrey Cripe, that businesses have to remove billboard structures, instead of only sign faces to receive incentives to be able to convert a billboard to digital. A business would have to secure six structure elimination credits to convert one static billboard into a digital billboard. A stakeholder committee that spent six months meeting to develop the recommendations had recommended that businesses receiving credits for eliminating signs, not structures. One structure can hold more than one sign face.

Kalamazoo City Planner Andrea Augustine said the language change could result in more sign faces coming down for each billboard conversion.

Cripe had wanted to table the decision, saying that it would allow commissioners to thoroughly think through the changes they had discussed. A motion by Chairman Mark Fricke to not recommend that billboards be allowed downtown failed, as did a motion by Vice Chair Rachel Hughes-Nilsson to require that digital billboards not change quicker than one minute. Fricke cited concerns with the billboard above Olde Peninsula at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Portage Street, saying placing a digital billboard there could distract drivers on an already busy stretch of road. Hughes-Nilsson also cited safety concerns in her suggestion.

The draft ordinance likely will go before city commissioners for a first reading on Aug. 5 and a public hearing on Aug. 19.

Emily Monacelli is a local government reporter for MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact her at emonacel@mlive.com. Follow her on Twitter.